XX morning show fans can stop mourning

I have a friend who drives his 15-year-old daughter to school every day, and he swears they listen to Scott Kaplan and Billy Ray Smith on XX Sports Radio.

(Yes, I’ve thought about reporting him to the authorities, but he’s a good friend and she seems like a smart, well-adjusted kid, so I’ve held off.)

Anyway, the friend sent an e-mail telling me they were in the car yesterday morning listening to John Kentera and Bill Werndl when his daughter said: “I never thought I’d be saying this, but I really miss Scott and Billy Ray.”

Well, Good Friday brings good news for this teenager and others who have been “missing” Kaplan and Smith: They’re back.

Three weeks after they took themselves off the air in a contract dispute, Kaplan and Smith were scheduled to return at 5 a.m. today.

No specifics were given, but then again, it sounds like nothing really changed, either.

“Nothing changed in the contract,” Kaplan said yesterday. “(It) is going to be lived up to.

“We never asked for one penny more than what the contract stated,” Kaplan said. “We didn’t use this as a time to renegotiate and get more. … We’re getting paid now what the contract originally said.”

Said Smith: “We’re going to do the job we signed up to do.”

Jack Evans, vice president of programming and operations for Broadcast Company of the Americas, which owns XX Sports, denied throughout the dispute that the company had breached the contracts and said Kaplan and Smith could have returned to work at any time.

“We’re excited about Padres baseball starting on Monday and I’m glad this is behind us and we can move forward,” Evans said.

Kaplan and Smith, who started as a team nine years ago yesterday at XTRA Sports 690, signed four-year contracts at the start of 2009. The hosts said they had three other “opportunities” in San Diego but ultimately decided to return to a station where, as Kaplan said, “we’ve got seven years invested.”

Of course, they also had contracts at the station, and even if someone ultimately ruled they had been breached, it would have taken money to prove that. So this certainly was easier.

Everyone said they plan to live happier ever after, and whether you believe it, hey, business is business, and it made sense for both parties for everything to end this way. Kaplan and Smith can go back to doing their crossbreed of entertainment and babble; the station can enjoy the ratings they provide, and all of us can try to forget we ever heard Tommy Griffiths.

The week ahead

So there’s the Final Four and the start of baseball season (Yankees-Red Sox; who’d have guessed?) and Dick Enberg’s debut with the Padres, and all of it is just a prelude for Woods Week.

Tiger Woods’ news conference from Augusta National is at 11 a.m. Monday. Then comes the endless dissection of it for the rest of that day and the next day until the announcement of the two golfers who will be in his threesome, uh, pairing for the first two rounds. Then more talking about that until, finally, on Thursday, his official return, which will be live on ESPN.